Archive for October, 2009

Not been out in the hills for a while and this weekend’s weather isn’t looking great especially tomorrow so it might have to be the climbing wall. At least we’ve got an OM meet in Langdale to look forward to in two weeks time.

I haven’t mentioned the (not so!) mighty Tigers for a while. It would seem that the finances of the club aren’t what they should be (hmmm, feeling of deja vu here!) and as a consequence the Chairman Paul Duffen has resigned which was a bit of a surprise as normally it’s the manager who carries the can! However popular opinion seems to be that Phil Brown only has a match or two to turn things around or he’ll be on his way too. I have to say some folk have very short memories, for all their faults Brown and Duffen have taken us to the promised land of the Premiership which I honestly never thought we’d do in my lifetime. There again the fans who are shouting for their heads probably don’t remember because they were supporting Man United or Liverpool or even Leeds at the time! Funny old game eh!

Anyway, back to the subject of todays blog…I decided it was time to change my car. Mainly due to the fact that my Honda Jazz has done 76,000 miles (mostly done on the A82 I suspect!) in four years and was coming up to a major service which would have included a new timing belt and also it’s MoT was due at the end of November. So the search was on and after looking at the usual suspect (Jazz, Fiesta etc) my research found me looking at the Hyundai i20. I’d really made my mind up but when I went to the dealer they were doing the i30 at such a discount it was going only going to be £300 more than the i20. So after much umming and aaahing I decided to go for the the bigger i30. It is still a very sensibly priced car though!

Petesy and a few pals were planning a West Highland Way endurance test with an overnight at Tyndrum so we had arranged to meet up with them in the Real Food Cafe on Saturday evening.

Jamie also had a few days off and decided to fly up from Manchester to join us on Saturday before heading off for a Corrour wild camp. So we picked up Jamie at Glasgow Airport and headed off to Arrochar to do the Cobbler. Absolutely glorious day as we headed up to the Narnain Boulders.

Elaina and Jamie heading towards the Cobbler

Jamie couldn’t resist climbing on to one of the boulders with almost disastrous consequences…!

Jamie trying to fall off one of the Narnain Boulders!

The Cobbler

Elaina's balancing act!

We were on the summit by 2pm but not before we met a young lad Kieran who proudly told us that he was “conquering the mountain” on his own as none of his pals were into hillwalking. Further enquiries found out that he was 14 years old and that while he had juice he had no food! So Elaina offered him a Snickers bar and we gave him advice on the easiest way down. We were well impressed that a young lad should be out in the hills on his own but something just wasn’t quite right…more on this later…!

Of course Jamie had not done the Cobbler before so had to “thread the needle”. I’d done it before so offered to take the role of photographer…well that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

Elaina and Jamie threading the Needle

Time was getting on and as we had a rendezvous in Tyndrum we decided to take the easy way down round the back. At the Narnain Boulders we met up with Sandy who had spent last night wild camping on Ben Lomond and had decided to join us for a fish supper!

As we wound our way down the track we came across young Kieran again who was now walking with a group with another young lad. That’s nice we thought, he’s met up with a family and he’s made a pal! But then it became obvious from a comment made by one of the adults that Kieran was part of the family! Ah well, so he wasn’t actually on his own, he’d obviously just gone on ahead from his family when we met him earlier, still we could forgive him for having his own little adventure and good luck to him in his future hillwalking career. Still not sure about the Snicker bar though!

So onto Tyndrum to meet up with ptc and co. We waited…and waited…Jamie had to leave to get his train to Corrour…we had our fish suppers…and hot chocolates…we were getting worried by this point as it was 8.45pm by this time but the lads staggered in for well deserved suppers of various descriptions and copious amounts of coffee!

All in all a cracking day, made even better by getting free fish suppers following a misunderstanding with our order…10 out of 10 for customer service to the Real Food Cafe…although I suspect the fact they know we are regular customers may have had something to do with it!

Well at last the Tigers managed a second win of the season but still managed to make hard work of it by letting a goal in four minutes from time. And then there were five minutes of injury time! Much nail biting took place in that last nine minutes! It brought back memories of the good (bad?!) old days at Boothferry Park when I could never really relax unless we had a three goal lead (not that that happened very often!).

Today we planned to do Ben Lui but a combination of setting off a bit later than planned and a problematic river crossing saw us turn back at the foot of the mountain. Still got a couple of decent photos…

Looking towards Ben Lui

Another view of Ben Lui

Probably for the best as the weather took a turn for the worse. So regular readers will know where we finished up…